Rotten egg smell invades significant part of Los Angeles

Here's how widespread the bad smell was Monday: When Aubrey Farkas heard people saying the source of it might be the Salton Sea, she told a reporter for the Contra Costa Times, "I don't even know where that is."

No surprise, perhaps -- the nearest part of the Salton Sea is about 160 miles from her office in Sherman Oaks.

Beginning early Monday, scores of people reported a rotten egg odor to fire departments or air quality officials, and likely thousands more smelled it -- if not millions.

In addition to swaths of L.A. County, it was reported in Ventura County to the west and San Bernardino and Riverside counties to the east.

Even a few people in Orange County smelled it.

On one online map, readers reported the smell as far as Simi Valley to the west, Temecula to the south and close to Lancaster to the north.

No one using the freeways could possibly have traveled so far so fast in Southern California.

Monday evening, officials said they weren't sure of the cause, but "several factors" pointed toward the Salton Sea.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District, an intergovernmental body that regulates air quality in much of Southern California, sent field inspectors to the San Fernando Valley, Long Beach, Colton, San Bernardino, Riverside, Perris, Temecula, Banning, Palm Springs, La Quinta and the Salton Sea on Monday.